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The Rapid Evolution of (Digital) Marketing 23

Video is a firmly entrenched stalwart of the online marketers toolkit today, and
you’ll find viral video components featuring in many of the case studies later
in this book.

Don’t forget the old faithful

All of these changes give you a flavour of the shifting sands of the digital mar-
keting landscape, but lest we forget, the basics of online marketing – develop-
ing a solid strategy, creating a high-quality web presence, search engine
optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), website analytics,
e-mail marketing, social media, online PR, affiliate marketing and online
display advertising, the topics we cover in Understanding Digital Marketing –
all still apply. Effective digital marketing is all about finding the blend of chan-
nels that works best for your particular business and your particular group of
customers.

Amidst all the media coverage and online hype surrounding social media, it’s
easy to forget that search offers the most effective direct channel to targeted
prospects who are actively looking for what you have to sell. According to
comScore figures for December 2009, the global search market grew by 46
per cent year on year, with a staggering 131.3 billion searches conducted
worldwide during the course of that single month, compared to 89.7 billion
searches for December 2008.

We mentioned this in the first chapter of Understanding Digital Marketing and
it’s worth reiterating here.

Technological advances have punctuated the evolution of advertising throughout
history, each fundamentally altering the way businesses could communicate
with their customers. Interestingly, however, none of these ground-breaking
developments superseded those that came before. Rather, they served to
augment them, offering marketers more diversity, allowing them to connect with
a broader cross-section of consumers. In today’s sophisticated age of paid
search placement, keyword-targeted pay-per-click advertising and social
networking, you’ll still find the earliest forms of advertising alive and well.